Idle Blonde finally gets out of bed ....

(Wellllllll ... It got your attention *S*)

... is a strange title for a Blog. To be honest I could have entitled it 'The campaign centre for 48 hour days is now open!'.

These last 5 weeks seem to have been non stop ... 24/7 there has been something either happening or about to happen in both my Real Life and in my Second Life. Mostly these things have not been bad (Real Life is of course always a little smelly *S*) and certainly Second Life has been an interesting challenge with new performers starting with us and all that is entailed in organising times, dates, fees, and expectations. As well as RL and SL there is now BM bidding for slices of my time ... BM??? I hear the consternation and quizzical notes in your minds following your eyebrows skyward.

BM is Blue Mars! This is the latest online virtual reality that is currently in a semi open beta and I believe is on schedule for full public razzamataz later this year. I know you must all think I am perhaps 'Mad' ... 'Traitor' ... 'Thrill Seeker' (I like the last one by the way! *S*) but really there are some complelling things about Blue Mars which I suggest warrants anyone who enjoys Second Life taking the time out to at least dip a little toe into the 'Martian' experience.The most 'eye popping' reason for seasoned Second Life residents to get their 'Inter Virtual World' visa (free client download in other words *S*) are the graphics. As soon as you start the client up and experience those first few minutes I am certain you will agree the vistas are stunning. Once you stop cooing over the graphics you will start to appreciate some of the other equally superb features ... like the physics modelling!

We all remember entering Second Life and waddling around like ducks which have stumbled onto the left overs of a drug fest! With Blue Mars you will look cool from the get-go no need to despair about finding the right Animation Overrider or considering the consequences of whether the AO in your shoes will override the super duper one you bought from 'AOS-r-US'!! This wonderfully life like experience for the new visitor to Blue Mars is thanks to the fact this virtuality is based on the CryEngine 2 game platform.

In common with a lot of 'first person' game platforms you really do experience the world very much as you would in RL ... this does for the time being mean those of us experienced with 'camming'in SL will feel a little restricted but this feeling quickly passes and indeed feels quite natural. There are improvements that need to be made with both the client and the server platforms but considering it is still in Beta I have to report the experience is very satisfying.

Once the experienced SL resident takes a breath and starts to scout around the client you quickly begin to appreciate all the things which aren't available ... but most are not as surprising as the fact that there are NO built in building tools. Blue Mars is a virtual world which is for the most part expected to be built by it's residents but all of that building and indeed ALL content creation takes place 'out of world' using a variety of graphics and 3d modelling packages. I suspect that this will be off putting to some people but if my experience of SL is anything to go by there will be sufficient curiosity and talent out there to bring more than enough value added content into Blue Mars to inspire and continuously amaze anyone who chooses to be part of it.

On a slightly 'softer' note I must say I have been paticularly impressed with the people I have met in Blue Mars; without exception they have been friendly and incredibly helpful and indeed many of them are either active SL residents as well or are at least still maintaining a presence in SL as BM takes up more and more of their time; the result is that for new 'immigrants' from SL there will be people around who will be comfortable talking about BM in familiar SL terms such as 'rezzing' and 'tp's'.

As a final word I would like to say even if you have no intention of settling in BM please make at least one decent exploratory visit to make sure you aren't missing out on this wonderful experience.

Hope to see you in BM soon *S* [Amanda Nieuport - in BM]